


nervosa

by nebulousviolet



Category: The Mortal Instruments - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Gen, almost a character study, introspective, isabelle centric, tw: eating disorders, tw: suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 07:36:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20042290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet
Summary: Fuck the mnemosyne rune and all that comes with it; amnesia is bliss, else her mother wouldn’t have come running to her with the family jewels, corroded beyond repair, beyond beauty.(Isabelle, unwrapped.)





	nervosa

**Author's Note:**

> so i’ve been wanting to write a character study on isabelle forever since she’s my fave tsc character of all time. this isn’t where i initially wanted to go but hey, the source material hints heavily at alec and isabelle’s codependency, and we all know that clary is the absolute queen of unreliable narration when it comes to isabelle, so why not?
> 
> TW for: eating disorders, suicidal ideation, veiled references to self-harm, an overuse of metaphors

Alec looks at her through the tines of his fork, prison bars of his own making, and says, “We can’t keep doing this anymore.”

Isabelle is fifteen years old and pushing around salad on her plate. Jace is in Idris with their parents and Max - they always take Jace with them when they have the opportunity, something about him missing the Home Country, as if Alec and Isabelle are as alien to them as New York - and Hodge is being Hodge, sequestered in his study and drinking tea and tisanes or whatever the hell it is he does in there. Isabelle can’t cook, but she can read and count well enough, so salad it is. “Doing what?” she asks, playing dumb, and Alec puts the fork down, the clatter reverberating through the kitchen and, by extension, Isabelle’s bones.

“This,” Alec says, gesturing to the lettuce leaves, the glasses of water, the piece of gum laid by Isabelle’s knife like a promise. “Jace is going to notice.”

It’s always about Jace, because their mother doesn’t really care all too much about marriage and domesticity anymore, and Robert is too busy poking holes in Alec’s psyche to care how much more his collarbone juts out now. Thinking about this makes Isabelle’s head hurt, and she avoids answering by taking a sip of water and closing her eyes, the lashes as heavy as the 50lb weights Jace sometimes lifts when he’s in the mood to show off. It’s always about Jace with Alec, and Isabelle loves her brothers, but Alec is naïve if he thinks she really cares as to whether or not she has their approval. “Then stop,” she whispers, and Alec looks at her for one long moment, his eyes very, very blue, and then looks down at his plate and sighs.

*

Look: Alec and Isabelle have always been scarily codependent, even after Jace showed up and things went weird and off-kilter. Their parents are M.I.A half the time, Hodge is depressive, and Max is too little be of much use when they’re tweens, and too irritating to be of much fun when they’re adolescents. So it figures that when Isabelle trades memorising war dates for memorising calories on the packets of instant noodles, Alec follows suit, if only on autopilot. 

For Isabelle, it’s not so much a weight thing as it is a control thing - she already knows she’s pretty, and while  _ skinny _ is a stretch in the way that it isn’t for Alec, she’s well built and fit enough for  _ slim _ and  _ toned _ and  _ slender _ to apply, not that that matters after she wades in knee-deep. But the  _ choice  _ is what gets her, because Isabelle had no choice in finding out about her father’s misdeeds or her mother’s bad decisions that culminated in them being halfway across the world from everyone else, but she has a choice in this. That’s how she tries to rationalise it to Alec, anyway, when he finally figures what the hell it is she’s doing and wants to know why - not that she bothers to tell him about the  _ first  _ reason, about affairs and secrets and things her mother takes out on a face that made those mistakes.

Here’s the thing, though: Alec is more of a control freak than Isabelle could ever dream of being, and he’s plenty competitive, so maybe she should start worrying when Alec’s loose sweater look more like drapes than items of clothing. Not that it matters, she tells herself. It’s Alec. Alec’s been hating himself for years, nothing new, and it’s not her fault if he’s found a new method for his own madness. Not her fault she’s Orpheus, at risk of losing him should she ever look back, and him Eurydice, doomed to follow.

*

In the end, it isn’t Jace who notices at all. It’s little Clary Fray who says, “I know what you’re doing.”

Isabelle pauses, her hands in her hair, Clary staring at their reflections. Clary really isn’t in a place to judge, Isabelle thinks, because everyone can tell that she’s lusting over her own brother. But again, it’s not like Isabelle and Alec have the healthiest of relationships, even if the incest side of things is definitely off the table. “I don’t know what you mean,” Isabelle finally replies, and lets her hair hang loose, a shroud to protect her from outsiders. Clary props her chin up with her palm and stews for a moment, which Isabelle hates, because she’s only known Clary for, like, a month and yet she just knows that she’s going to hate what comes out of her mouth even more.

“They made us watch the anorexia video in freshman year,” Clary says, breaking the silence, as if Isabelle is supposed to even know what that means. She thinks, privately, that Clary probably gets off to these rare moments where she knows more than Isabelle does for a change. Must be nice, knowing so little and yet thinking you know so much. “I guess they thought a bunch of fourteen year olds were going to starve themselves to death because we didn’t look like Kate Moss, or something.”

“I’m sixteen,” Isabelle informs her, and also, “I don’t know who Kate Moss is.”  Clary studies her and says, “I’m saying that, as the way things stand, you would’ve benefited more from that talk than I did.” “

Maybe your Daylighter friend can tell me all about it sometime,” Isabelle mutters, as if that’s all Simon is to her right now, as if Simon’s face and his stupid unnecessary glasses don’t make her feel weird and twisty, as if someone’s looking through her instead of at her for a change. Kind of how Clary is looking at her now. Then she adds, “I’m not starving myself to death. Just so you know.”

Clary shrugs. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” she says. “It’s not like you’ve ever felt the need to before.”

They don’t mention Alec. Alec is Eurydice, after all. Looking back is forbidden; temptation would be cruel, and Clary is always so quick to point out that she is not Hades in this metaphor.

Isabelle wants to hit her. She doesn’t. Clary leaves the Institute of her own accord and Isabelle wonders why her throat feels like it’s closing up.

*

The first time Isabelle notices she’s struggling to breathe is when they’re doing knife-throwing, the one act of violence she finds herself not naturally brilliant at to begin with. One moment she’s missing the target and the next she’s missing a heartbeat and then she’s gone, as graceless as Alec practicing falling from heights onto the training mats at age twelve, a heavy stone falling into water without making a sound.

“Izzy?” Jace asks, because Alec is with Magnus - not that Jace knows that, not that Jace knows anything. This is the bargain they struck, after all, the deal they made for the passage up to the light. The world  _ does _ revolve around Jace, just not in the way he thinks it does. “Iz, this isn’t funny.”

“I’m not laughing,” Isabelle snaps and closes her eyes, just for a second, just so she can see something that isn’t swirling. She’s sweating even though she hasn’t even done anything, and her mouth is dry and bitter and it feels like she’s crawling out of her skin, like she’s too-tight and too-loose and about to undergo metamorphosis. “Do you ever feel like the universe is playing some giant cosmic joke on you?”

But this is Jace she’s talking to, and she could almost cry when she realises what she just said. He helps her up and her heart is still pounding when he says, “Sometimes I think I’m the punchline.”

Isabelle thinks she’s going to be sick. “Figures,” she says, and thinks of the Seelie Court, of things she’d rather forget. Fuck the mnemosyne rune and all that comes with it; amnesia is bliss, else her mother wouldn’t have come running to her with the family jewels, corroded beyond repair, beyond beauty. “I’m sorry about Clary. And Valentine.”

“You don’t choose blood,” Jace says, already closing up and backing away like he always does whenever Isabelle so much as mentions the name Clarissa Fairchild (she won’t call her Morgenstern, even if Jace insists on it - as if it’ll suddenly drive the point home when the blade’s been far from his chest a long time already. Maybe Jace, stubborn as he is, will only understand once he stops trying). His hair is a peculiar shade of gold, refracting and reflecting light but never absorbing it. It’s a little too fitting, if you ask Isabelle, but people stopped asking her things a long time ago, always in want of a more serious answer.

“I could’ve told you that one for free,” Isabelle mumbles under her breath, the rafters of the training room seeming as distant as clouds. She doesn’t do much for free anymore, not calories, not love, not anything real. For someone so bad at math, it’s become a fine art. Hodge, she thinks, would be so proud.

*

Maybe Isabelle has always had issues with food, right from being a kid - her mom never taught her how to make it, after all, and Isabelle often responds to a lack of autonomy by refusing to engage at all. At age ten she ruins a whole pot of pasta and swears not to eat it ever again; funny, how childish promises creep back to you. Sometimes Alec looks at her and just sighs, as if he’s seen the future and he doesn’t like it. Yeah, well, it’s not like Isabelle’s going to live long enough to wither away, anyway - the average life expectancy for a Shadowhunter is twenty-five, shorter if the Conclave is as small as theirs is, now that half of the adult members are dead after the Uprising, and Isabelle’s got years of  _ before _ to tide her over till then. Sometimes she feels like telling Alec this. But then Alec would be upset, which would upset Jace by extension, though Jace won’t know why, and, hey, Alec and Isabelle agreed on this right at the beginning: this is the one thing Jace needs to stay the hell away from, since he’s far too obsessive over everything else to even think about doing  _ this _ , whatever it is. They didn’t need to swear it on the Angel because they swore it on something higher: themselves.

Maybe Alec really can read her mind, the way he pretended to when they were little kids, because Isabelle thinks about this as she chews her piece of gum, and he looks away, stricken with disappointment and something she can never quite describe. Isabelle’s never been too good with words, anyway. She tells herself it doesn’t matter.

*

They never really stood a chance, Isabelle tells herself as she stares into a shop window, looking for pieces of herself amongst fabric and liminal space. She wants something less ephemeral than this shitty boutique and their shitty dresses and the shitty New York weather, but her mother wanted, once, wanted a whole new world, and  _ look _ . Better just to change what you have than rebuild from scratch. Better to rip out the worst parts and try to salvage what you can. No fire lasts forever.

Dams, though. Dams last.

They never really stood a chance, she thinks, and feels the ache in her stomach, more of a memory than anything else. How were they supposed to know?

*

Clary throws one of the pamphlets on Isabelle’s bed as she walks by, imperious as ever. “Hey!” Isabelle demands, not bothering to get up to look at it. “Who let you in?”

“Jace,” Clary responds, because, go figure, she still hasn’t learned that fire burns, even with that hair of hers. She walks on by, probably to escape Isabelle’s wrath, when Isabelle eventually sits up and examines the glossy paper and the bold words printed on it:  _ Eating Disorders and You - How To Get Help. _

How ironic, considering Clary goes to a hospital bed nearly every day to stare at a mother who can never wake up without some kind of divine intervention. Isabelle feels the same kind of hopelessness, sometimes, because Maryse is alive, sure, but is she? Anyway. Isabelle thinks that Clary shouldn’t be taking this out on her, because Isabelle held her together three weeks ago when Raphael showed up with her best friend’s dead body ( _ Simon, Simon, Simon) _ , and she feels like maybe Clary should get a grip on her own life without lashing out, without creating problems that don’t exist.  _ Many patients suffering from eating disorders seek control _ . Bullshit. Isabelle is in control now. Always. Always, always, always. That’s the point, see?

*

“Not hungry?” Magnus asks her in Alicante, as Jace plays piano and Maia grins at Simon over some joke that’s probably steeped in three layers of pop culture and Isabelle’s stomach does a somersault for no fucking reason, not even out of hunger anymore. “The food’s decent. For Nephilim.”

“Alec hates being condescended to,” Isabelle says on autopilot, and Magnus smirks at her over his drink - the strawberry one Isabelle recommended, actually, the one she took three sips of and had to put down before she puked.

“Good thing you’re not Alec,” he returns, and then adds, “The London Institute does a mean cottage pie.”

“I don’t know what that is,” she says sweetly, and she’s been here before, hasn’t she? No matter; she stands up to dance with someone who isn’t Simon or Meliorn or anyone she vaguely recognises at all, instead. Magnus grabs her wrist and says, “No, but I need to talk to you,” all serious, and Isabelle sits and looks at him and she’s fifteen years old and in the kitchen and Alec is telling her that he can’t do this anymore and staring at subway posters with people they can never have and she’s going to be sick all over her best dress. She’s so tired. It’s over and it isn’t and Maia Roberts is laughing, hollow, empty, and when will it be enough?

“ _ Need _ ,” she spits, her head doing the loop-de-loop. “Nobody  _ needs _ anything. Aren’t you immortal?”

“Aren’t you not?” Magnus says, and tightens his grip until she sits. To his credit, he doesn’t tell her she looks sickly, or beautiful, or that she needs to eat, or that she needs to stop. He looks at her. He’s always fucking looking. This is what Alec sees in him - Alec, Eurydice, so sick of being left in the dark, so sick of his leader being blind. Orpheus loses her in the end, you know. It was never going to end well. What could they have done? 

Anything. Anything but this.

“Alec told me,” he says.

“Alec cares too much.”

“Alec told me that he saw the pamphlet Clary gave you and that he didn’t want you dead in a coward’s coffin because the Clave blamed you for something your parents did,” Magnus snaps. Breathe in. Breathe out. He’s wearing that sparkly headband. Isabelle can practically hear Alec saying the words, can hear the concern in them. Maybe that’s where she belongs, after everything, after Sebastian and Max and Aline and the dead empty space in Maryse’s eyes where hatred used to be. At least hatred was something. Valentine knew that.

Must’ve been nice to be Valentine. Must’ve been nice to know everything.

“Mundane medicine is illegal,” Isabelle says, because she knows now that while Eurydice is the one in the dark, it is all Orpheus’s fault. All her fault. “And the Clave-“

“Oh, fuck the Clave,” Magnus says, and Maia Roberts has stopped laughing. How fortuitous. “You want to live, don’t you?”

No.

“What do you think?” she whispers, eyes wet, and Magnus holds her hand, tight, tight, tight, and doesn’t let go until Alec comes.

*

It’s 2011 and Emma Carstairs is one year away from realising she is in love with Julian Blackthorn. It’s 2011 and Isabelle Lightwood finds control in other ways - D&D, babysitting, going out with friends and organising concert venues. Most Shadowhunters die at twenty-five. Jace was, in most circles, predicted nineteen. Alec, the same. Isabelle - well, who cared?

But it’s 2011 and Alec and Jace are twenty-one, and Isabelle is twenty. Five more years. Isabelle - Isabelle can do five more years. And from then, another five; isn’t it strange how, at fifteen, Isabelle only saw a funeral pyre, and how at twenty she only sees the future?

_ We can’t keep doing this anymore, _ Alec said half a million years ago, or maybe only five. It’s not only Magnus Bane who slips in time. These days it’s less frequent, but Isabelle still sees her thirteen-year-old self in the mirror on occasion, and has to bite back a scream. 

When you’re mortal, though, you can go back. You can change. It’s 2011, and Maryse still fucks with her head but it’s a lot harder when she spends less time in the building that she thought was going to strangle her, in the building where she counted calories to infinity and beyond.  _ Then stop _ , she tells Alec five years in the past. Don’t look back in anger, but don’t confuse that with not looking back at all, see? Pop culture reference. Simon would be proud.

It goes like this: she is  _ sorry sorry sorry _ . Her therapist might think she’s called Isabel Wood, but her advice is solid. Dying doesn’t change anything. Living - living changes something, and it gives her Simon and her brothers and Clary and everyone else.

It’s a choice, just not the one Isabelle thought it was.

You want to live, don’t you?

_ Yes _ .


End file.
